Alex Szalay is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Big Data at the Johns Hopkins University and the director of the Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering in Science. As a cosmologist, he works on the statistical measures of the spatial distribution of galaxies and galaxy formation.
He is a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the ACM. He has received a number of awards and honors, including the 2004 Alexander Von Humboldt Research Award in Physical Sciences; the 2007 Jim Gray eScience Award from Microsoft Research; being named doctor honoris causa of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2008; the 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award in recognition of his contributions to data-intensive computing; and the 2020 Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize, awarded for his contributions to physical cosmology. Additionally, his team received the 2021 ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data Systems Award for its work on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database system.
Szalay received his BS in physics from Lajos Kossuth University, Hungary in 1969 and his MS in theoretical physics and PhD in astrophysics from Eötvös University in 1972 and 1975, respectively.
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The distinction recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their transformative contributions to computing science and technology.
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A new data science and translation institute will bring together experts from a wide range of disciplines to capitalize on the rapidly emerging potential of data to fuel discovery across the university.
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The Johns Hopkins computer scientist and astrophysicist was awarded the biennial Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize for his contributions to data-driven statistical cosmology.